Rwanda Project Report
Having suffered years of ethnic and political tensions, Rwanda was ravaged by a civil war which led to the 1994 genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Rwanda today struggles to heal and rebuild, but shows signs of rapid development.
‘The aims of the project were multi-faceted and yes, very ambitious’, said Aiglon’s Caroline Lewis, Leader of the Project. ‘Our aim was to give our students an opportunity to see how Rwanda is rebuilding itself after suffering atrocities which are still in living memory, and to also give them an opportunity to make a real difference to the lives of orphans and disadvantaged school children in a remote rural area on the eastern border’. Mrs Lewis is particularly knowledgeable about the country having adopted her five year old son Patrick from Rwanda in 2006.
The Aiglon team were based at a Mission and adjoining Catholic School in Kibungo, a two hour drive east from the capital, Kigali.
Here are the team:
Lower 6th: Kiril Shakhnovskiym Yasmin Alaghband, Chiara Könye
5th Form: Jean-Baptiste Hakim, Amanda Harford, Sara Rodés, Ana Maria Castro and Paul Mardaleichvili
4th Form: Mathew Longdon
In addition Mr and Mrs. Newland, Firouzeh Af Sharina and Jane Cameron all joined the team. Staff were Mr and Mrs. Logie and Mrs. Lewis with her son Patrick.
Outcomes
Various fundraising initiatives led by Aiglon College and parents, in partnership with the local community and other schools over the past year - including sponsored lunches, cake stalls, book collections and a drama performance collection - all helped to raise a remarkable CHF 15,000 for the project. The project has also received several large individual donations.
Aside from helping and working in the orphanage; the team also repainted a dormitory, built and stocked a small library in the orphanage and donated several hundreds of kilos of clothing, books and toys for the nursery. In the School, English lessons were taught and the team refurbished a room as a library, building bookshelves and stocking them with several thousands of Francs worth of English books generously donated by the Aiglon College Library and Usbourne Books. A football tournament was also organised and a hundred new leather footballs were distributed to ten different schools in the parish of Kibungo.
After serious discussion amongst the students, it was decided that the funds raised for the project would be most useful in financing two contract teachers for the next year. They would be English speakers who could provide training and support to the current team of sixteen teachers and 1,100 students.
The team also purchased several much needed small items which the students felt, and again through discussion, agreed would be most beneficial in the day-to-day running of the school and orphanage.
Finally, we carried out a great deal of preliminary preparation towards the building of a further seven classrooms to be added to the existing seven rooms. This will enable the students to continue their studies for a further three years at the same site after finishing primary school, rather than having to walk to the nearest secondary school which is several kilometres away. We believe we already have around 30% of the capital to finance this much larger project.
The visit has marked the beginning of what I hope will be a long term partnership between Aiglon College and Kibungo. We plan to return to the project in July 2011 and continue to develop the links we have established here.
Caroline Lewis
